The government is simply too big for President Obama to keep track of all the wrongdoing taking place on his watch, his former senior adviser, David Axelrod, told MSNBC. “Part of being president is there’s so much beneath you that you can’t know because the government is so vast,” he explained.

Axelrod also defended the administration against criticism of the Department of Justice’s decision to seize reporters’ phone records, noting that Joe Scarborough had criticized the administration for the number of national-security leaks that had occurred. Scarborough was having none of it: ”I’ve heard the president’s defenders trying to say this, and I congratulate you guys for going off into a room, calling each other, and coming up with this bogus argument, but never did I suggest that 100 AP reporters have all of their phone records seized, their cell-phone records seized, their home phone numbers seized.”

“So please, save that for somebody else to buy into that,” he demanded. “Answer my question.”